messenger is a woman?"
"I suppose she is, sir, though her clothes, especially the lower----"
"Well, put her in the drawing-room, and give her some tea,
and--er---buns, and chocolates, and things. And light a fire. And
if she looks that sort give her some cigarettes. Egyptians they
usually like."
"Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. I did take the liberty of offering her a
whisky-and-soda, sir, when she arrived."
"With the result, I suppose, that she snapped your head off for your
impudence."
"No, sir. Seemed flattered, sir, although she didn't want one just
then," said the butler as he made his exit.
"I shall surprise Booker by kicking him one of these days," Carnforth
said to himself as he watched the door shut behind his ancient
retainer. "And now for our small mariner's list of sea stores.
Gee-Wilikins! He must think I'm Harrod and the Army and Navy Stores
rolled into one Siamese twin. Well, the telephone and a reliable
secretary are sound things."
Mr. Martin Carnforth, M.P., was a man of decision. He knew what he
wanted, where to get it, and how to get it quickly, and (being shrewd
and businesslike) acted on this knowledge with small delay. Then at
the call of a gong he dressed, and dined thoughtfully and well. He
had been out with Captain Kettle on the warpath before, and knew that
small sailorman would dine comfortably if dinner was before him, and
if it was not, would, apparently with equal pleasure, fast for forty
hours on end. Mr. Carnforth, though tough and wiry, was a man of
full habit, and liked to meet his meals at their usual fixed
intervals.
Half-way through dinner he remembered Dr. Brown. "Has that messenger
gone yet, Booker?"
"No, sir. In the drawing-room."
"H'm, well, it's rather dull dining alone. No, don't you go, Booker.
I'll go and see what she's like myself." And a half-minute later he
was saying, "I'm amazingly sorry I didn't know you were still here.
Please come in to dinner at once. Booker! Bring back the soup."
Now I think it was Dr. Mary Brown's voluminous black leather breeches
and neat boots and gaiters which got her that very prompt invitation
in the first instance, and it was a handy way she had with her eye
that warmed up early acquaintance into a pretty warm flirtation
before the end of dinner. Carnforth was once pithily described as "a
bit of a warrior." Dr. Brown had of late decided that the way to get
the most out of life was not to be too prim. I am not going to give
away her age, but she had a tidy handful of experience behind her.
She had tried philanthropy, dancing, religion, and medicine, and
found them all very well as hobbies, but had tired of each in turn.
Now she was seeing life as a Lady Motor Scout, and a swashbuckling
air was necessary for local colour.
"Have another walnut," said Carnforth, as they sat over their
dessert. "I shall call you 'cork' directly."
"'Cork,' why?"
"Because you are stopping the bottle. No, my good girl, help
yourself first. Well, if you won't, I'll do my best. It's '70, and
we aren't going to leave the bottle with one of Kettle's little games
to go through on ahead. Ahead of me that is. I shall have to clear
out in half an hour, I'm sorry to say, my dear. My housekeeper will
bed you down here for the night, and see you have shaving tackle and
all that."
"Oh, but I'm coming too."
"I bet a trifle Kettle didn't ask you. Cuddlesome little way with
him, hasn't he, when he doesn't want anybody?"
"Don't be horrid. He's rather a dear, though, isn't he?"
"Now, you're trying to make me jealous. Have some cognac with your
coffee if you won't drink any more port, and no--Booker, I
particularly told you Dr. Brown always smokes Egyptian cigarettes.
Apologize, my dear, for my bachelor ways, but I hate the beastly
things myself. And I don't smoke cigars with '70 port. Heigh-ho,
_Ge-wine_, _ge-women_, and _ge-song_, as they say in Lord
What's-his-name's spiritual home, are great things, my dear, aren't
they, and I always think when I go off cruising with Kettle that my
bright young career will be cut off short with suddenness. That's
why I am dining decently before starting out to-night. It's a pity
to leave a bottle more of the '70 than's necessary to my young fool
of a nephew."
"You will smuggle me on board, won't you?" said Dr. Brown, moving her
chair up closer.
"I'm a bit deaf. What was that? Here, come and sit on my knee, and
then you needn't bawl at me."
"Oh, I can make you hear all right. You'll manage to get me on
board, won't you, old thing? If it hadn't been for me you would
never have heard of the affair at all."
"By Jove, you have ripping eyes, m'dear, when you look at a man like
that. You'd better keep out of Lady Kettle's way, or she'll be
reading the riot act."
"Then you promise?"
"Oh, Lord, I'll promise anything. Look out. Here's Booker."
It was a slightly embarrassed Martin Carnforth that walked up, motor
head-lamp in hand, to Captain Kettle's rendezvous. The huge dark
airship, swinging to her rock moorings, twittered to the breeze
overhead, and the little sailor, with cigar cocked to an acute angle,
lay smoking on a bank of heather. He dandled a 12-bore handily
across his knees. And the cock of his red torpedo beard was full of
truculent satisfaction.
"Well, did you shoot the whole of the crew of your Zep?"
"No, sir, only a brace of them. The rest concluded they would do as
they were told, so I put them in gaol before they could change their
minds. It doesn't do to trust Germans an inch these days, Mr.
Carnforth."
"It never did. But where did you find a gaol up here on the moor?"
"There's an old adit close by, sir, for some of the lead workings,
though it's too dark for you to see it now. I drove them into that,
and then blew down the entrance. They'd some handy little bombs for
killing babies with in their after car, and I used one of those. I
had to set the fuse by guess, but it went off all right, and nobody
was hurt. At least I wasn't."
"H'm. And so I suppose they starve or suffocate to death."
"Oh there's a vertical shaft half a mile further in that leads up to
the moor. We'll leave word, if you like, that they are there, and
anybody that hankers after them can wind them up through that shaft.
But what anyone can want Germans for these days is beyond me."
"Collectors fancy all sorts of bric-à-brac, even live Germans.
There's quite a cult in some political circles for collecting live
Germans and pampering them. How did you catch the Zep, by the way?
Had she come down to poach your rabbits? She's rather out of her
latitude up here in the middle of Yorkshire. There are precious few
babes and women to kill amongst these moors."
"There was a sudden cold snap in the early morning, sir. My minimum
thermometer on the garden wall showed eighteen degrees of frost,
though when I went to look at it after breakfast to take the reading,
the sun was shining and the air temperature had gone up to 45
degrees."
"And they wanted to come down to thaw?"
"No, sir, there was a heavy snow-storm up aloft there, and the weight
of snow forced them down. This craft here, Mr. Carnforth, is 500
feet long and 40 feet beam, and if you work out what half an inch of
rain-water--turned into snow--means over that surface, you'll find it
figures out at a lot more weight than she could carry. So they gave
up their job of being frightful over Bradford and Leeds, and slanted
down to earth up here in the dales, where it is quieter. They were
just starting to scrape off the snow (and making a very poor job of
it) when I came to the top of the scaur there to look at a weasel
trap."
"And the weasel was forgotten, I suppose?"
"Mr. Carnforth, with me business comes first, and pleasure
afterwards. I took the weasel--a fine young dog---to hang up for my
keeper's larder, and re-set the trap, and then I gave two Dutchmen
who'd forgotten their manners a barrel of number five apiece at
thirty yards. Afterwards I told the rest to put up their hands."
"And they kindly did it? Tame of them."
"I'm afraid, sir," said Captain Kettle dryly, "they believed I'd part
of the British Army at my back. It was very foggy, and they didn't
seem accustomed to our moorland."
"Bang goes another ideal! I always looked upon you as another George
Washington."
"Well, sir," said Kettle with a flush, "I try to be truthful, and if
necessary, I would have taken on the whole thirteen. But I'd got an
idea I might make use of this Zeppelin, and I knew that if we started
scrapping they'd destroy her before I could get them all comfortably
killed off. Anyway, I didn't tell any lies, if that's what you're
meaning. No, by James! I just sang out in the fog to 'keep back
there out of shot' and hailed down to the Dutchmen that if they
didn't march into that adit, one-time, I'd mow down the lot of them.
I expect the cold and this moorland country nipped them. They ran to
cover like a push of the old-style Dutch deck-hands with a brace of
mates after them. Well then, as I say, sir, I fastened them up and
went back to breakfast. Lady Kettle never likes me to be late."
"I admire your taste in messengers," said Carnforth with a grin.
"You seem to have made a great impression on the damsel in the
leather breeks some time during your shady past."
"My Great James! Has she been talking?"
"Good heavens, man, don't jump down my throat--or hers--like that. I
assure you she's been most discreet. I wish I'd had your chances
though. With you ahead of me, I don't get a look in."
"I don't know what you're driving at, sir," Kettle snapped at him
acidly. "I did nothing to the lady I--er--couldn't help."
"Oh, that will be quite enough for Lady Kettle I'm sure when we laugh
over the yarn with her--All right. I'll climb down, Colonel. Don't
shoot."
"Our views about ladies are very different, sir," said Kettle with
much stiffness.
"Thank the Lord, yes. I'm out for fun. You've Lady Kettle. Now
then, business: There's a five-ton motor lorry load of hydrogen
cylinders, and a quarter of a mile of piping in case we can't get
alongside. There's a ton and a half of petrol on another lorry.
There's a third lorry with a special line in T.N.T. bombs fitted with
the Carnforth patent vane. I've never contrived to get our fool
air-craft officials to take them up, and now's the chance to
advertise them. That's the only reason I came. Now what's the
scheme? Are you going to take your Zep down to Hendon and make a
present of her to the British Army? As you haven't invited the
authorities here, I should say that is the correct procedure."
Captain Kettle pulled thoughtfully at his red torpedo beard and
stared at Carnforth.
Mr. Carnforth pursed his lips and scratched his chin and stared at
Captain Kettle.
Then Carnforth sniggered, and that seemed to break the spell. "I
thought, sir," said Kettle with some embarrassment, "we might do
something on our own. You see neither Navy nor Army has any use for
us. They say I've a wooden leg, and they say you're too--er----"
"Tum-tummy."
"Well, I believe the brutes would even say that. So I thought we
might put in a little trip without consulting them. You see, sir, I
know very little of Europe, having spent, as you know, most of my
life at sea. We'd a Preacher who came to our chapel two Sundays ago
and he'd done what he called 'the Rhine tour.' I didn't think much
of it myself, but he kept dragging his experiences into his sermon,
and the congregation liked it. It's rather a slur on me, sir, but I
may tell you in confidence that the collection was thirteen and
two-pence up on my own average. I've got to get level with that
somehow, or the Wharfedale Particular Methodists will want to know
why I am sticking on at their head. One of our mottoes is, 'By their
deeds ye shall know them.'"
"It's the devil of a position," Carnforth agreed. "I'm no preacher
myself, but as a politician I agree with you. But I don't quite
catch the point."
"Why I was thinking, sir, we might do the Rhine Tour (just as the
tripper people advertise it) in our own Zep, and empty our ballast on
anything in the shell-manufacturing line as we went along. Those
commercial towns are not mentioned in the Tourist Guide, but I guess
we can spot them. Our preacher was great on the medieval castles,
and I should scorn to drop bombs on them, because they will always be
of interest to photographers when Germany's opened up to white men,
after the war. And there's one other thing."
"Well?"
"I know, sir, you laugh at poetry, but our preacher said the Rhine
reeked of it. I tell you, sir, when he occupied my pulpit, he let
off poetry about the Rhine till I fairly writhed. It was other
people's too, and the swine never owned up. But let me go there, and
pump out some verse of my own on the spot, and I'll give my crowd the
squirms or know the reason why. Yes, by James! They'll understand
whose congregation they are by the time I've finished shooting off
those Rhine verses at them, the mutinous dogs."
"Hullo!"
"Yes, Mr. Carnforth, with shame I own it, but I've been having
trouble. Lady Kettle, as you know, has been filling our pulpit on
several occasions during my absence, and I want to clear her ticket
at once. She dropped the collection, but she's kept the popularity
going strong. It's me that two of our blighters have got their knife
into. One's a chemist from down the dale (not rightly in our circle
at all) and one's a sheep farmer from above Arncliffe. They complain
I preach too hot a kind of hell for their complete enjoyment,
feeling, I suppose, they're in for it as residents later. Well, Mr.
Carnforth, let me get that Rhine poetry straight from the soil, so to
speak, to fire out at them, and they'll swallow any brand of hot
place they're offered. I know the beggars. And now, if you please,
we'll just run through the Zep's engines and her rising gear. The
rest of the gadgetts can wait till we're under way. But I tell you
beforehand, she's a regular bag of tricks."
Dr. Mary Brown was not discovered till they had left the gloom of
England behind them, and were heading across a great saucer of the
North Sea. It was Kettle who found her in the after gondola,
plugging her ears against the noise of the engine exhausts, and
Carnforth, when called into consultation, rather basely disclaimed
all knowledge of her intention to stow away.
"Well, Miss," said the little sailor acidly, "you have forced your
way in where you were not invited, and you'll have to do as you're
told, lady or no lady."
"Call me Doctor, please."
"To start with, I'll not have my ship disgraced with you in those
breeches. Can you make yourself a skirt, if I give you the material?"
"I can't, and I won't try. You're horrid."
"Very well, then, Miss, I will be your dressmaker. In the meanwhile
you'll stay in there with the lock turned till I'm ready."
But Captain Kettle was not able to commence dressmaking just then.
From somewhere on the well-watched water below, a seaplane soared and
buzzed towards the huge airship with vicious intent. She was
travelling three miles to the airship's two, and was ascending
rapidly.
The sailor picked up the loud-speaking telephone and tried to get
hold of Carnforth in the engine gondola, but without result. The
roar of the exhausts hung round them like the noise of a battle. So
he steadied his helm and ran aft down the central alley-way.
"Give her more speed," he bawled in Carnforth's ear. "There's an
English seaplane after us, and we'll be bombed if we don't look out,
by our own men. There's no chance of letting him know who we are
with all this row going on, and he's as noisy as we are."
"You've all the speed I can get," Carnforth shouted back. "These
infernal engines have got a chill on the gizzard. What does the fool
of a 'plane want to interfere for? Can't he see we're going towards
Germany?"
"There's only one kind of good Zep from his point of view, sir, and
that's a dead Zep. If we can't run, we must rise."
"I've got the horizontal rudders full on, and she doesn't answer.
Not enough speed."
"Then we must turn the exhaust into the envelope and warm up the
whole outfit. That will make her rise fast enough."
"It's about ten to one we set her on fire in the process if we try
that. I say, Captain, there's a damn sight more in Zep-driving than
the ordinary amateur guesses at. Here, that's the cut-out to this
set of engines. You stand by it, and shut when I wave. I'll shut
the cut-out of the port engines. As soon as you think we're high
enough, open them again, and don't you go on a second longer than's
dead necessary. We're squirting white hot air on to hydrogen
ballonettes, and it's about as safe as having a firework party in a
powder factory. Now then, hup!"
The din of the exhausts was dulled, and the huge airship quivered.
Then she swelled visibly, straining at her covering till all wrinkles
were lost in chubbiness. The soaring seaplane seemed to be dropping
like a stone beneath them. The ring of sea, with its ships and its
tiny fret of waves appeared to be falling away through the bottom of
space. And then they swooped up into a veil of cloud, dank and icy
to the feel, and shutting them away from all human sight, and
spangling them with instant dewdrops.
"Keep her at that level, sir, for half an hour," Kettle bawled at his
friend's ear, "and I will change course a dozen points. We'll soon
shake off our navy customer down below if only this cloud doesn't
thin out before we've run our distance."
The little sailor went forward again, and his engineer, with a
minute's rest ahead of him, straightened his back and interviewed the
prisoner through a port hole.
"I told you you'd catch it," he chuckled.
"Captain Kettle was most insulting."
"He struck me as being icily polite. I knew he'd never stand those
bags."
"I mean he was insulting in persisting in calling me, Miss, when he
knows quite well I'm Doctor."
"So you are, m'dear. I'll lace into him sometime when we get home,
if you like. Of course you're a doctor. Any one could tell that at
once by your learned frown. Look here, do you mind tying up my
knuckles where I've grazed them?"
"Oh, are you hurt?"
"Horribly. F-s-s! Go gently, m'dear. Ah, that's nicer. There, if
I squeeze on to your hand like that, it doesn't ache so much. That
bandage properly sterilized? Here, hold on to it a minute. My
blessed port engine is going on strike again. Who wouldn't sell a
farm and go Zep-driving?"
Now, Captain Sir Owen Kettle, K.C.B., was beginning to find his
navigation in a tangle. At sea, come fair, come gale, come night,
come fog, he could find his way from port to port with any expert who
did business on the great waters. The sextant and the log were his
cousins; the compass, with its most erratic variations, was his
familiar friend.
But up here in the navigating position of the Zeppelin he was faced
with a score of new problems. Height, angle of ascension, angle of
descent, wind drift, speed by engine evolution, retardation due to
increase in envelope size, varying air friction, leeway, were all
indicated on dials and recorders in front of him. He took these as
accurate, to start with, but soon convinced himself that many of them
were recording fiction.
For a while, too, he pinned his faith, mariner-fashion, on the
reliability of the elaborate Thompson compass. But when, during a
passage between two electricity-discharging clouds this instrument
emulated a windmill in full working activity, he felt that one of the
props had been taken from his universe. Even his cigar in that rare
air burned abnormally.
Occasionally, very occasionally, he got a glimpse at the sun, and,
comparing this with his watch, was able to get an approximate
bearing. But for the most part the Zeppelin travelled through a bank
of cloud, though even this, most unfairly (he felt) was not enough to
conceal her.
Those envious dogs, the officers of the British Navy, who sailed the
North Sea below in forty assorted craft, kept spotting her outline.
They merrily wirelessed to one another, "Mark Zep over!" and at
intervals, as she blundered down their sentry line, snapped off
shrapnel at her. It was a poor solace to Captain Kettle's feelings
that their shooting was extremely bad. The hardest trial of all was
not being able to bawl back at them exactly what he thought.
There are, of course, ninety and nine close shaves for one actual
shipwreck, and about these it is one of the primary rules of
shipmasters (as it is of railway companies and others) to keep the
most profound secrecy. Captain Owen Kettle is, as has been recorded
many times, one of the few really truthful men now alive, but even
he, when Mr. Carnforth bawled in his ear "Finding your way all
right?" snarled back "Think I don't know my job?"
"You're making for the Texel, aren't you?"
"As it happens, I am."
"Of course, my dear chap, I don't question your navigation for one
moment, but when the clouds pulled away for a moment just now, I
spotted one of my own ships heading along the same course as
ourselves."
"Well?"
"Oh, she's off to Norway, that's all."
"By James, sir, are you trying to teach me to navigate?"
"Not a bit, not a bit. Why should I?"
"Because you know nothing about it. And I may tell you, sir, that I
don't either up here. I can get neither sights nor soundings, and my
compass is like a tee-to-tum. You might think, Mr. Carnforth, it is
an easy thing to take a departure from Flamborough Head and hit
Europe. Yesterday I would have said a child could have done it. But
just now I'm free to own there are difficulties. These auxiliary
sky-wind jammers take a bit more thinking out than the ordinary
seafaring man has any idea of. But don't you get uneasy, sir. You
can carry in mind I've got to do that Rhine Tour, or the Wharfedale
Particular Methodists will take more handling than I care to talk
about."
A minute later Carnforth was telling Dr. Mary Brown that he had
"pulled his Eminence's leg all right."
"Nasty little wasp," said the lady.
"Not a bit of it. He's the best chap in the Eastern Hemisphere. But
I bet you a bottle of eau de Cologne, my dear, you can't guess what
he's doing just now."
"Oh, writing poetry, I suppose."
"Not he. He's sewing at a skirt for you. It will be made of canvas.
He cut it out with his pocket-knife on the deckplanks. It's not one
of those nasty skimpy ones, either. There will be tons of room in it
to cover all of you decently."
"You're both of you horrors," said Dr. Mary Brown. "Oh, there,
they're shooting at us again! Mr. Carnforth, I forbid you to laugh.
Do something! Get it stopped."
Now, ever since the start from that lonely Yorkshire moorland, the
port engine of the Zeppelin had been giving trouble, and naturally
Carnforth had given it most of his attention. The automatic
adjustment of its carburettors for varying air-pressures was faulty,
its magnetos shorted at every jolt, its plugs sooted almost as soon
as they were replaced. Its driver was burned, stifled, deafened by
its imbecilities, but nursed it through every ailment triumphantly.
It was the starboard engine that let them down. Lubrication failed
at one of fifty points; there was a smell of heated steel and
scorching oil; and before Carnforth, frantically searching, could
find the sore, a gear-box bearing seized, and the whole of the
starboard machine stopped with a squeal and a jar. Incidentally one
huge propeller blade flicked off into space.
"Good afternoon," said Mr. Martin Carnforth, M.P., as he watched its
whirring flight. "I wonder if the old bus has a big enough helm to
keep her straight against the port engine alone. Hullo, what's that?
Yes. Oh, chasing her tail, is she? If I slow down more than a few
revolutions she'll stop altogether. Aye aye, sir; stop port engine
it is."
Dusk was falling, and the huge gas-bag drifted as a helpless derelict
at the same pace as the cloud which surrounded her. "It's beginning
to look a bit sick for your Rhine Tour," Carnforth admitted, as he
rejoined his friend. "I'm a rotten Zep-driver, and that's a fact."
"You're one engineer, sir, and not six. I'm the man that's to blame.
Here am I, a failure at my own trade. I aimed at the Texel, and a
minute ago, through a hole in the clouds, I sighted Heligoland, four
points starboard and about ten miles ahead. By James! Mr.
Carnforth, if we could have kept way on her half an hour more, and
those patent bombs of yours are what you claim, we could have blown
Heligoland into fine spray."
"Shall we miss it now?"